Tag Archives | Anarchy

[Site notice: Re-posting this now (originally posted 7/19/2011) due to a timely observation (of an older post) from Disinfo.com commenter SuddenlySpam.] A blast from the past for all you newshounds. Enjoy via the Times:

Modern civilisation may not be quite as safe as we thought. Britain’s security services have been privately warning their staff that western societies are just 48 hours from anarchy. MI5’s maxim is that society is “four meals away from anarchy”. In other words, the security agency believes that Britain could be quickly reduced to large-scale disorder, including looting and rioting in the event of a catastrophe that stops the supply of food.

The maxim will provoke debate over whether MI5 is over-egging the threat, partly to justify its rapidly growing budget. It also opens a wider question as to whether civilised societies could so quickly revert to primitive behaviour. MI5 — whose motto is “regnum defende”, defend the realm — uses the “four meals” rule to assess the threat levels from attacks on strategic installations, such as computer networks and power stations; natural disasters; or widespread strikes and civil disobedience.

My name is R. Talmadge Lacy and I was born on 12/13/1979. (12 = number of Apostles + Jesus = 13) // (1+2+1+3+1+9+7+9=33) 33 is called the Christ vibration for reasons that are mysterious and weird. On top of all that my dad was a carpenter and my mom’s name is Virginia: (Virgin)ia.

Now what exactly makes me the “Anti”-Christ? Well according to mainstream Christianity, Christ is something separate from yourself; an external authority figure one must submit to in order to be saved. I, however, do not believe in this model of Christ. You might even say I believe the exact opposite is true. Now I’m not the first or only person to hold this point of view — from Jewish mystics to gnostic Christians, many have associated the Messiah (the morning star) with our personal consciousness. Thereby by the light of consciousness every man & every woman was likened to a star — therefore one must follow one’s own highest light in order to become one with God.… Read the rest

A meeting of anarchists, progressives, a self-described “surly feminist” and others on the far left of the political spectrum is underway. They’re young and radical. They’re organizing intently. The matter at hand could be oppression, or the police state, or revolution.

But it’s not. It’s walking dogs.

They sit in a circle in the living room of a Petworth group house and tick off their “route updates,” which mostly consist of details about the new canine clients they’ve signed up.

That’s because business is booming.

The seven people present belong to Brighter Days, a dog walkers’ collective founded on anarchist principles. Last year, the five-year-old business grossed more than $250,000. Its members have equal ownership and make business decisions by reaching consensus during weekly meetings such as this one. Any of them can block any decision.

Note: The truth is the last thing anyone wants to hear. I’m expecting to get abuse for this, if certain people end up reading it.

The march 26th demonstration was … interesting: Very dull, very boring but very neccesary. There was a desperate, depressed atmosphere in the crowd. They were led along, often corralling themselves behind arbitrary barriers in the road. Several times I went into the unoccupied side of the road as it was becoming dangerously overcrowded in the main march. They were just so depressing.

Then there were the anarchists. At first I liked the cut of their jib as they had a bit more life to them; while the criminal damage seemed fairly minor and tokenistic, but then after I got home I saw the footage. I noticed, not for the first time, the way the so-called Black Bloc were always surrounded by camera crews and strangely inactive police officers, and I thought: SET-UP.

Site editor’s note: This post from D.J. Pangburn originally appeared ondeath + taxes.

Mo Karn, alias of a ‘known anarchist,’ filed a Freedom of Information Act requrest with the Richmond, Virginia police. The department delivered the documents, now they want them back.

Karn (a member of Richmond Copwatch) and others filed under the Freedom of Information Act to learn police procedures during protests, so that they could better plan and coordinate their efforts in direct action. According to Karn’s (she is a member of the anarchist collective The Wingnut), the group “wanted to get copies of the police protocols so we could know when the police are breaking their own rules.”

Perfectly legal, it would seem. We should all know when police are breaking their own rules or the law.

However, the documents weren’t merely standard police protocols but homeland security and crowd control guides.… Read the rest

Dante’s Inferno provides us with what is perhaps the most apt picture of tourism to date. More specifically, it is in the first layer of Hell, Limbo, that Dante depicts the circumstances that contextualize tourism and the individual who undertakes it, i.e. the tourist.

Like the unbaptized and virtuous Pagans whose torture is the inability to imagine something greater than their rational minds can conceive, the tourist never ventures beyond the predetermined image of the places they visit. The tourist deals only in images, whether it is the image of the Grand Canyon that was promised to him by the travel agent, or the image he must make of it (by snapping a picture) in order for it to become real. The tourist cannot know the mystery or grandeur of the Grand Canyon as it stretches across the horizon, she can only seen it in comparison to the image she was promised.… Read the rest

Recently VICE magazine published a story that was nostalgic for forgotten terrorist groups from the 1970s, to the point of eulogizing them in an age of far more deadly and insidious Islamist attacks around the world. Could it be that the cowards behind the Rome embassy attacks this week sensed the moment was ripe for a return to letter bombs and misguided anarchist idealism? TIME takes a look at the perps:

The Italian anarchists who have claimed responsibility for the letter bombs that exploded in the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome Thursday want to make it clear that they consider themselves part of something bigger. “We’ve decided to make our voice heard once again, with words and with deeds,” read a note written in Italian found in the remains of a crude bomb that exploded in the Chilean embassy. “We will destroy the system of domination.”

The note was signed by the Informal Federation of Anarchy, a loose union of Italian anarchist groups that authorities say is the largest such organization in the country.

Article V is the only part of the US Constitution that tells how we can change the Constitution. The states, not Congress, propose amendments at an Article V Convention. An Article V Symposium was held at Cooley Law School on September 17, 2010 in Lansing, Michigan. Bill Walker, cofounder of Friends of the Article V Convention, shared how he filed two federal lawsuits stating that Congress was obligated to call an Article V Convention. The latter lawsuit (Walker v. the Members of Congress in 2004) was appealed to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court declared, as it had in three other separate decisions, that Congress must call for an Article V Convention. But Congress has simply refused in violation of the US Constitution.

To listen to Bill Walker’s speech and to the other scholars at the symposium, who all argue that we should want, not fear, an Article V Convention, click on this link.… Read the rest

LaMonica: Voltaire said, “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” Is that not your view of nature?

Graffin: *laughs* No, I don’t think so. See that implies there’s a design and of course Voltaire was a deist and a famous one at that and I think he thought that there was some design but I would say that there is no design to nature.

LaMonica: But you certainly have a pedantic sense of humor. You say, “As far as I’m concerned, if a philosopher or theologian wants to interpret scientific data as divine, he or she has a right to do so.

For those who have far better things to worry about, a recap: Recently, at a worker-owned Portland anarchist cafe, Red And Black, a police officer was asked to leave by a co-owner. A local blogger was outraged (enough so to revisit the subject), the insipid Portland hipsteryuppie press picks it up and the national media has a field day yukking it up over the bizarre notion that some people don’t think cops are acceptable in polite company.

Meanwhile, no one (except Infoshop News in their roundabout, “let’s pretend we’re trying to be objective to avoid the political fight” identity politics-laden “anarchist” sort of way) asks the crucial question: Why is a police officer going into an anarchist cafe in the first place?